Doping in Pursuit of PerfectionEducation: The Key to Drug-Free Sport

WORDS Marie-Louise Böhler

When renowned cyclist Lance Armstrong was proven guilty of doping, it was not only his awards and seven Tour de France titles that he was stripped of, but also his accumulative reputation.

While cycling remains one of the sports where the use of performance-enhancing drugs (doping) is most common, many other doping cases involving famous athletes have been revealed in the last few years.

It would seem that the issue of doping doesn’t want to go away. Other famous athletes whose reputations have been tarnished because of drug abuse include: The major league baseball player Alex Rodriguez, the gymnast Luiza Galiulina, 100-metre sprinter Ben Johnsonand even the now-retired soccer legend Diego Maradona.

All of them have one thing in common: their unbelievable achievements were made possible by doping.

It never ends with just one pill. Instead athletes end up taking a whole drug cocktail to reduce the side effects of their medicines. Photo: Gatis Gribusts / flickr

Doping has become so prolific that it happens in most countries. Even South Africa has a history of doping scandals: boxers Francois Botha and Ali Funeka and the women’s football player Amanda Sister, who represented South Africa at the 2012 London Olympics.

Since doping has become so common, sports associations try to eliminate the athletes who use drugs from the competition as early as possible by carrying out regular doping tests. By 2016, 119 Olympic medals were revoked from athletes found guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs.

For a number of years now, FIFA has been increasing the number of doping tests conducted. In 2013, FIFA performed 854 tests; this number skyrocketed to 1,838 in 2014 and 1,350 in 2017 respectively.

Doping destroys a sport. People remember doping scandals and, as a result, their suspicions are raised when athletes achieve any outstanding successes. For the audience, it is difficult to distinguish between a great success based on natural ability and hard work, and a success owed to doping.

Pressure to achieve perfection

It would seem that our natural bodies are no longer good enough. The world wants to see athletes who break the world record, instead of just winning the competition. In our modern world, which is driven by the pursuit of perfection, it gets harder and harder to meet and exceed expectations.

‘Win at all costs’ is a dangerous motto in the sporting world, which often tempts athletes to take performance enhancing drugs. The 100m sprint at the Olympic Games is one of the most popular races in the world. Photo: Seattle Parks/ flickr

Psychologist and author Anne Wilson Schaef focuses on addictions. ‘Perfection is self-abuse of the highest order,’ she says. ‘It is basically the loss of the spiritual awareness and the outcome is an addiction to chemicals and a loss of touch with the whole person,’ she adds.

Today, being good is not good enough anymore. We live in a distorted era of Barbie and Ken, relying on Instagram and other social networks for a viewpoint of the world, but these channels hardly show an unedited picture.

Schaef emphasises the comparison of a human being with a machine. ‘Our bodies are seen as machines and we are seen and treated as machines when trying to make ourselves more efficient. We use mechanistic needs, like surgeries and medicines or chemicals, to change our abilities.’

As the use of drugs and medicines becomes more common, people lose their sense of danger about taking them. Similarly, the non-stop advertising of sports nutrition and sports supplements means it becomes the norm to take these products.

Especially with cycling, there have been huge technological achievements. The improvement of technologies, such as carbon fibre bicycles, aero wheels, suits and helmets, made the sport more competitive. Many athletes, who wanted to win at all cost, abandoned the legal ways of enhancing their performance and instead turned to doping.

However, Galant says that while sport is supposed to be all about entertainment, it has become more centred on competition.

Doping doesn’t affect merely professional athletes

‘Sports supplements have proven to be a gateway to doping, specifically with steroids, for boys in particular. Because nutritional products only have limited effect, they become frustrated, so they (feel they) have to graduate to something stronger,’ says Galant

Galant sees this advertisement of nutrition supplements on TV, in magazines and in supermarkets, as a gateway for athletes and other people to use doping supplements and get involved with so called hard drugs. Magazines such as GQ and Men’s Health, show photoshopped pictures of muscular and lean bodies. When paired with the advertisement of sports supplements, they imply those bodies are the result of taking supplements. Galant stresses that in most cases, people overlook an important fact: fit and muscular bodies are not the result of a diet of nutrition supplements, but of hard work coupled with a healthy diet.

As a result, there are more people who dope but do not engage with sport at a competitive level. Galant refers to a study, which found that a high percentage of drug abusers are boys who go to the gym and are trying to obtain a perfect beach body.

‘The use of performance-enhancing drugs is not all about enhancing performance. It is still dangerous but it’s not all about performances,’ he says.

Sports supplements like the PowerBar products are sold in every supermarket and pharmacy and are supposed to support a healthy lifestyle. Photo: Juska Wendland / flickr

Athletes sacrifice most of their lives to achieve success. They are recruited at a very young age and begin to train many times a week. Due to this, their whole life revolves around their sport and they are put under huge pressure to be successful.

Children are especially prone to get caught in the vicious circle of seeking perfection, which leads to stress, a lack of self-confidence and questioning their identities. ‘It becomes particularly dangerous when children come to link their sense of self-worth too strongly to their sports achievements,’ says Clinton Gahwiler, a psychologist at the Sports Science Institute of South Africa (SSISA). ‘This is the greatest source of fear in sport – both of failure and success – and ultimately contributes to the high drop out rate we see in teenagers’, Gahwiler continues.

While adult athletes are fully aware of their actions and of the consequences doping has on their body and their health, children are not as clued up.

Galant argues that parents can be influential in whether young athletes decide to dope or not. He emphasises the importance of parental influence by pointing out that SAIDS has changed its education strategy and programme to target not only athletes and coaches, but especially the parents of young athletes.

‘That’s where the values and morals as well as how athletes approach competition are established. If you look at what sports you like or don’t like, if you are in sports or are a journalist, if you trace back, you would trace it back to the influence of your parents, or someone in your home environment. So values around work ethic and working hard, not cheating, or values that are about taking short cuts, cheating, win at all costs, can be traced back to that environment,’ Galant explains.

He attributes the prevalence of doping offences in South Africa to the fact that sport is seen as a pathway out of poverty, which is rife in this third-world country. Although they may only have high school diploma, many sportspersons (especially the rugby players) have the potential to earn more than CEOs, if they manage to get a contract with a professional franchise, explains Galant. This would enable them to provide for their whole family, mainly during their playing years.

How can we prevent drug abuse in sport?

The London 2012 Olympic Games tested half of all the competitors and every medallist for drugs. The motto for the games was ‘Win clean, say no to doping.’ Photo: Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport / flickr

Galant states that while prevention is not possible, deterrence is important. Continued education, interventions and testing are deterrents and reduce the risk of doping among athletes. It is important to make the issue relevant and to constantly engage in conversation with athletes to remind them of the dangers of drugs. He says this is difficult because you cannot scare people with a ‘before’ and ‘after’ picture, as the drugs used have the desired effect, but have negative long-term consequences.

Galant is confident that drug-free sports are possible. ‘I don’t think we will ever completely eliminate performance-enhancing drugs or the use of steroids in sports, but, we can ensure to the best of our abilities that athletes compete cleanly and that the environment is conducive to clean competing’.

Marie-Louise just finished high school in Germany and came back to her roots in South Africa to travel and to meet new people. She loves exploring new places and cultures and she would like to make the world a better place by writing and sharing stories.